My basic assumption is that everything is genetic until proven otherwise.That being said, hereditary doesn't necessarily mean genetic. Money, status and a specific religeon are also inherited with significant reliability.Twin studies seem to show that some remarkably trivial as well as important preferences are genetic.I see no reason why the emotional responces that make messianic leaders attractive and compelling can't be genetic.

BDDVM wrote:My basic assumption is that everything is genetic until proven otherwise.That being said, hereditary doesn't necessarily mean genetic. Money, status and a specific religeon are also inherited with significant reliability.Twin studies seem to show that some remarkably trivial as well as important preferences are genetic.I see no reason why the emotional responces that make messianic leaders attractive and compelling can't be genetic.

you think everythign is genetic, that goes against common experience, look into epiginetics and you'll see what i mean, It is you who define youself, you life experieces, you evolution so to speak, not you genes, yes they account for alot but certainly they are not the be all end all.

I am not saying there is no dispositions, only that we can overcome these..

Everyday experience requires the highest level of distrust precisely because it's overlooked so easily.At first glance it's obvious that the earth is flat. At first glance it's just human nature to follow confident, charismatic leaders.I find epigenetics to be an interesting sideline while genetic traits are in fact the be all and end all.For most if not all epigenetic traits I predict that there are genetic influences on these traits if you just go back a step or two.

BDDVM wrote:Everyday experience requires the highest level of distrust precisely because it's overlooked so easily.At first glance it's obvious that the earth is flat. At first glance it's just human nature to follow confident, charismatic leaders.I find epigenetics to be an interesting sideline while genetic traits are in fact the be all and end all.For most if not all epigenetic traits I predict that there are genetic influences on these traits if you just go back a step or two.

ok, so what is it that makes you so confident that everything is genetic.

Lest say you are apparently predisposed to cancer becuase of your heritage. Just making the simple choice to live the right way, diet, sleep, exersice etc can avert this apparently determined fate, do you think this choice is genetic.Funny how this thread is about blind faith, and you seem to have alot of that in segments of dna that code for proteins etc.

The simple choice? to live the right way. As someone approaching 50 I can assure you that our inborn and yes genetically based preferences are anything but simple to change. Our ancestors who faced periodic famine and early death evolved to prefer certain foods over others. Bacon tastes better than Kale for the vast majority of people. I have no faith in my personal preferences since I know many of them evolved for situations that no longer exist. Therefore I eat Kale but I still LOOOOVE bacon.Inborn preferences, and the knowledge that they are suspect. Be the best hunter gatherer you can be, listen to your heart. Be the best modern human you can be, listen to your brain.To paraphrase, don't listen to your gut, it's full of **** (literally).

BDDVM wrote:The simple choice? to live the right way. As someone approaching 50 I can assure you that our inborn and yes genetically based preferences are anything but simple to change. Our ancestors who faced periodic famine and early death evolved to prefer certain foods over others. Bacon tastes better than Kale for the vast majority of people. I have no faith in my personal preferences since I know many of them evolved for situations that no longer exist. Therefore I eat Kale but I still LOOOOVE bacon.Inborn preferences, and the knowledge that they are suspect. Be the best hunter gatherer you can be, listen to your heart. Be the best modern human you can be, listen to your brain.To paraphrase, don't listen to your gut, it's full of **** (literally).

ok, firstly i would just like to clarify that to say that genetics are the be all end all is simply in no way scientific, as you obviously know there is no be all end all to science..thats the beauty of it, we are always discovering new things.

Our early ancestors our shrouded in controversy and many theories so i would never be certain about anything they did, and they did not evolve "to prefer " anything, that aint how evolution works, its blind.Saying you have no faith in personal preference becuase you know they evolved for situations that no longer exist is a presumption, you do not know this, rather it is speculation based on evidence.

To be the best modern human listen to your brain and not your heart? I'm not sure I quite get this...Interestingly its now been established beyond reasonable doubt that there are 40,000 neurons in the heart and that its magnetic field is many hundres of times stronger then the brains, not only that but it communicates more strongly to the brain then vise versa..maybe the old addage is right after all, listen to your heart! (check out the heartmath institutes research for further developments )

Just try not to take somethign as be all end all, it will simply run you into an outdated mode of thinking at some point.

BDDVM wrote:My basic assumption is that everything is genetic until proven otherwise.That being said, hereditary doesn't necessarily mean genetic. Money, status and a specific religeon are also inherited with significant reliability.Twin studies seem to show that some remarkably trivial as well as important preferences are genetic.I see no reason why the emotional responces that make messianic leaders attractive and compelling can't be genetic.

I would agree with your first sentence if you it said hereditary rather than genetic. One of the reason being that complex behaviour cannot be entirely controlled by genetics, even if there are some genetic bases to them. Behavioural responses are based on emotion but also on intelect, and separating the different layers of causation in these kind of complex systems is very hard. At the most basic level, you might argue that gregarious behaviours (or lack thereof) are largely constrained by genetic, but anything beyond, I will doubt. And following a leader charismatic leader goes far beyond just competing for females/ressources with the alpha members of the troup, and this is where the learned/cultural part is going to act strongly.Another problem with faith as an essentially genetic thing is that actually faith and organized religion do appear to depend on a ceratin level of civilization to appear. If one look at the documented hunter gatherer tribes, it is visible that they usually have very little organization and are indeed quite democratic in their working. When ressources are scarce and everyone has to work all the time to be sure that there will be enough food, that leave little space to feed a leader and or a religious organization. Actually, it is probably agriculture and the ability to secure large amount of food and therefore to free part of the population from the food production/gathering task that allowed the development of chiefdom and organized religions. This is fairly recent (on evolutionary terms) and if it hijacked some genetically heritable feature, I have the feeling that the cultural inheritance is strongly involved in the devlopment and maintenance of behaviours.Note that cultures do evolve and select for succesful behaviours, even if they do not have a physiscal support for their inheritance.

Patrick

Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without
any proof. (Ashley Montague)

We might be stuck on some disparate definitions. I'm not saying that there is a "faithyness" gene. I can imagine a group of genes that result in a strong tendency towards emotional responces that make people comfortable with "strong" leadership. Conversely they would be uncomfortable with thoughtful "wishy washy" leadership.Attend some local political meetings to see these types in action.Now it's not enough to enable higher levels of organization to drive evolution. You have to kill or sterilize the have nots. Of course history is full of examples of "civilized" groups eradicating the unbelieving heathens and then turning on each other.

if the main question is just about why do human develop blind faith...I guess that every single human being just need something to hold on, to turn into when they have no answer. Because as a living being we need to have something other than us to guide us, when were still young and kids, parents are the first being saw, thus trusted. As we grow, we ask questions that our parents cannot answer, so we seek for another being for answers and guidence.Some put their faith to God, some other put their faith on universal power, and others would have their faith on science.

I did click. No danger, it is the google not so succesful competition to wikipedia.I do not suggest you click though. Even more so if you are drinking something, you might damage your computer.

try the summary of genopsych, the subject of our esteemed writer:

The process of evolution of species needs to be restated as: Procreation of variant types independent of its environment by the organism and selection of some of these variants by the environment in which the organism itself is an interacting integral part. The drive behind procreation is genomic potential. The primary directionality of evolution that is the tendency to evolve into higher forms of life is inherent to the organism which may be modified by the environment followed by viral or bacterial or fungal infections via symbiosis and directed mutations in that order. The purpose of evolution is the [self] preservation of the species, the life forms.

The genomic processes have primacy over the cell processes and genomes are self programmable.

Life may be construed as a state of matter with distinct properties such as self programmability, consciousness and free will.

Future research needs to be directed towards understanding the genetic basis of the instincts and intra DNA quantum happenings and quantum computations for better understanding of living systems.

The author is a geologist with a strange gaze on his pic.

Patrick

Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without
any proof. (Ashley Montague)